Backers Push Louisiana Abortion Bill Toward Supreme Court Test

By ROBERTO SURO, Special to The New York Times

Published: June 24, 1990

BATON ROUGE, La., June 20—
For national strategists on both sides of the abortion debate, the broad legal concerns raised in a restrictive new bill under consideration by Louisiana lawmakers are of critical importance.

The bill's chief sponsor, State Representative Louis Jenkins, and other proponents say they hope the measure, which would impose a virtual ban on abortion, will become the basis of a challenge to the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which established a woman's constitutional right to obtain an abortion.

''We want to test the Court,'' Mr. Jenkins, a Democrat of Baton Rouge, said in testimony this week before the State Senate's Health and Welfare Committee. ''We want to challenge it, and we want to do it with a very strong law that is unambiguous.''

Those involved in the debate say that a vote by the State Senate could come before the end of the month. The bill would criminalize abortion except when attempts to save the mother's life or that of the fetus result in the unintended death of the fetus.

The Bill's Chances

A procedural effort to defeat the measure was defeated this week in the Senate by a vote of 35 to 4. The House approved its version on June 14 by a vote of 74 to 27.

Gov. Buddy Roemer has said repeatedly that he would veto any bill that bans abortion in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother. Efforts to include such exceptions were easily defeated in the House. Evangelical Protestants from the northern and central parts of the state have joined with Roman Catholics from southern Louisiana in a powerful coalition that crosses party lines to adamantly support the near complete ban.

The bill's detractors agree that it could prove to be the vehicle for a Supreme Court decision redefining the states' role in restricting abortion.

''It is not so important what the court would say about this particular bill because even in the course of throwing it out, the court would be likely to establish new standards for the states,'' said Dawn Johnsen, legal director of the National Abortion Rights Action League. ''The more extreme the law, the more it would cause the court to test the limits of the constitutional protection of a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion.''

The measure under consideration would amend and re-enact a criminal law, adopted in 1855, that makes abortion a felony punishable by imprisonment.

Concerns Over Exception

Some opponents of the bill argue that its lone exception, when fetal death occurs during a necessary medical procedure, is vague and might be interpreted to prohibit abortion on a sick woman in a variety of circumstances, particularly when the abortion is performed separately from other procedures.

Dr. Diana Dell, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Baton Rouge, told the Senate committee this week that in her reading of the legislation she believes the bill would prevent doctors from performing an abortion to prolong the life of a woman suffering from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, sickle cell anemia or other diseases.

But, she said in an interview, the unintentional death of a fetus during emergency surgery on a woman who had been injured in a car accident would not be considered an illegal abortion. She said that the law apparently would prohibit abortions on women with breast cancer or invasive cervical cancer who sometimes undergo the procedure because treatment for those diseases can kill a fetus and because the pregnancy itself can accelerate the cancer.

Last July, in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the Supreme Court upheld a Missouri law prohibiting abortions in public health institutions, thus giving states new latitude to restrict abortion.

A Flood of New Bills

Since then some 350 bills restricting abortion have been introduced in 43 state legislatures, said Loretta Ucelli, communications director for the Abortion Rights League.

After the Webster decision the National Right to Life Committee produced a model bill, which it recommended to legislators in several states as a compromise, in that it allowed abortion in certain circumstances, with a good chance of being upheld by the Supreme Court.

Having tried and failed to pass its model bills in several states, including Alaska and Utah, the anti-abortion forces concentrated their efforts on Idaho. A bill patterned after the model legislation was adopted by the Idaho legislature last March, but it was vetoed by Governor Cecil D. Andrus.

The Idaho legislation would have permitted abortions in cases of rape and incest under certain circumstances. Abortion also would have been allowed in cases of ''profound'' fetal deformity and when physicians concluded that pregnancy represented a ''physical threat'' to the health of the mother. It provided civil fines of as much as $10,000.

Under Louisiana's felony statute, ''whoever commits the crime of abortion would be imprisoned at hard labor'' for terms of one to 10 years and would pay a fine of $10,000 to $100,000.